DNS Hosting Upgrade for Paid/Permanent users
Title
DNS Hosting Upgrade for Paid/Permanent users
Short, concise description of the idea
Provide a paid add-on DNS hosting option for users.
Full description of the idea
Background
As a semi-professional author attempting to "go pro", I registered my own domain name. I've spent five or six years on Livejournal, and I really do love the site, so I postponed my purchase of a domain name until I found a way I thought I could have the best of both worlds: my own domain name pointing to my Livejournal. I read How do I forward my domain to Livejournal and went, "Oh, YAY! Sign me up!" I followed the instructions, changing my CNAME record to livejournal.com and enabling domain mapping on LJ.
As it turns out, and as the posters of the no-status suggestion Use domain aliases when forming links on journal views and the rejected suggestion LJ-cuts and Domain Aliasing on suggestions have posted, typing in http://www.ai-hua.net/ will bring you to ai_hua, but if you click on an entry to comment (if you click on ANYTHING), the custom domain name disappears, and one sees http://ai-hua.livejournal.com/ again.
This was not what I wanted at all!
In my attempt to overcome this, I read How do I embed my Livejournal into my website in the FAQ. I also attempted to make sense of Embedding: Method Index on howto. Unfortunately, it's taking a lot more time and effort than I anticipated. I am not a programmer, and basic HTML is about the extent of my knowledge. (I can't even deal satisfactorily with CSS!)
What I suggest:
Instead of username.livejournal.com, users should be able to use www.domain.com transparently without having to learn all about the technical details of private hosting. LJ should include an option to pay for access to DNS services, as is currently done by Wordpress.com (see here).
An ordered list of benefits
- Increased revenue for Livejournal through the sale of DNS add-ons.
- Increased user satisfaction due to a better/improved LJ experience.
- LJ gains a popular feature other blogging platforms eg. Wordpress have had for a while.
- New users have more incentive to sign up for LJ (their own blog, hosted for $20 a year plus the $5 or $10 annual fee for DNS hosting? Yes please!)
- Existing users are retained (especially now that Dreamwidth, a code fork of LJ, is nearing public launch).
- Existing users of other platforms may be persuaded to migrate to LJ, as LJ offers far-superior privacy/security arrangements.
- LJ's current code base may have to be reprogrammed to support this. I'm not sure how much of a problem this is, as although Wordpress.com offers the domain name feature (and for free), Wordpress software seems to my non-programmer brain to work differently than LJ does.
- Possibly expensive initial outlay. However, this could be sidestepped with a waiting list so that LJ can be assured there are enough users willing to pay this fee before continuing/implementing.
- Possible confusion in the marketplace--is LJ a host or a blogging platform? However, Wordpress.com doesn't seem to have these problems, so I don't think it's very likely LJ will either.